urage to move, or even speak, lest we should destroy an organization
so delicate and sensitive. In like manner, did we but know in life the
perils over which we daily pass, the charged mines over which we walk,
the volcanoes that are actually throbbing beneath our feet, what terrors
would it give to mere existence! It was on the turn of a straw how Davis
decided,--a word the more, a look from one of them, a laugh, might have
cost a life. With a long-drawn breath, the sigh of a pent-up emotion,
Grog found himself in the open air; there was a vague feeling in his
mind of having escaped a peril, but what or where or how he could n't
remember.

He sat down in the little porch under the clustering vines; the
picturesque street, with its carved gables and tasteful balconies,
sloped gently down to the Rhine, which ran in swift eddies beneath. It
was a fair and pleasant scene, nor was its influence all lost upon
him. He was already calmed. The gay dresses and cheerful faces of the
peasants, as they passed and repassed, their merry voices, their hearty
recognitions and pleasant greetings, gave a happier channel to his
thoughts. He thought of Lizzy,--how _she_ would like it, how enjoy it!
and then a sudden pang shot through his heart, and he remembered that
she, too, was no longer the same. The illusion that had made her life a
fairy tale was gone,--dissipated forever. The spell that gave the charm
to her existence was broken! What was all the cultivation of mind,--what
the fascinations by which she moved the hearts of all around her,--what
the accomplishments by which she adorned society, if they only marked
the width of that chasm that separated her from the well-born and the
wealthy? To be more than their equal in grace, beauty, and genius, less
than their inferior in station, was a sad lesson to learn, and this the
last night had taught her.

"Ay," muttered he, below his breath, "she knows who she is now, but she
has yet to learn all that others think of her." How bitterly, at that
instant, did he reproach himself for having revealed his secret! A
thousand times better to have relinquished all ambition, and preserved
the warm and confiding love she bore him. "We might have gone to
America,--to Australia. In some far-away country I could easily earn
subsistence, and no trace of my former life follow me. She, at least,
would not have been lost to me,--her affection would have clung to me
through every trial. Mere reverse of fo